It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and to respond to two reports by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. May I say how useful it is that the Committee has given us the opportunity to debate these issues? The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) presides with great accomplishment over the Committee, which the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) accurately described as comprising a lot of the most thoughtful and well-motivated people dealing with this issue. However, I am not sure that the hon. Member for Newport West chose his adjectives correctly when he talked about opinions on the Committee ranging “from the deepest red to the densest blue”—I think he meant the most brilliant blue, but we know what he means.
Let me start with the constitutional convention. I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham North for his generous remarks about my involvement in the question of devolution. Given that the Government responded to the report in November—however opaquely, in the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)—I will be relatively brief, although I hope I can address some of the opacity he alluded to.
As the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said, there needs to be a compelling case for establishing a constitutional convention, but none has been made at this time. Indeed, some members of the Committee, including my hon. Friend, took the same view.
When we say that our approach to constitutional reform should be guided by public demand and responsiveness to local circumstances to have the greatest chance of success, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch regards that as unclear. However, having known his views for many years, I should have thought that that was exactly the kind of conservatism he would espouse—that things should emerge in the most appropriate way, rather than being engineered by some central body and imposed on a surprised nation. That—I perhaps put it less elegantly than he could—was the intention behind the Government’s response.
Like other members of the Committee, my hon. Friend knows that, unlike the constitutions of other countries, the UK constitution was not born out of revolution or an independence movement—it evolved. Nor do we owe our constitutional settlement and political institutions to a single point in time or a uniform set of principles; we owe them, of course, to centuries of history, throughout which the differing cultures and traditions of these islands have woven together.
Indeed, if we look at the devolution settlements to date, we recognise that. We have different arrangements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, reflecting their different historical and political identities, their differing needs and the appetite for devolution in different places. Each took a different path to devolution, and their individual settlements reflect that.
In the same way, the original devolution Acts contain a range of order-making powers, which have allowed for adjustments over time to make each individual settlement work better. This Government, too, have made commitments on devolution, and we have delivered. For example, in Northern Ireland, the transfer of policing and justice functions to the Assembly and Executive in 2010 reflected the continuing development of the political process there. Last year, the Government and the Northern Ireland Executive committed to examining the potential for devolving additional fiscal powers.
In Wales, we delivered a referendum, which resulted in the Assembly assuming primary law-making powers. We have established the Silk commission to consider the Assembly’s powers. The outcome of that work is the Wales Bill, which sets out a significant package of reforms giving the Welsh Government more levers to deliver economic growth and strengthening their accountability.
In Scotland, the Scotland Act 2012 will see the Scottish Parliament take on responsibility for raising as well as spending money, which will see the amounts it is responsible for increase from 16% of devolved spending in Scotland to nearly a third of the total block grant.
In each case, devolution has been driven by, in the words of the Committee, a continuing conversation about the differing needs of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. Devolution in England is a case in point. The previous Government promoted the prospect of greater regional devolution—an idea that did not resonate. With some justification, many people in the north-west, for example, feel a greater attachment to, and identification with, cities such as Manchester and Liverpool than with an administrative Whitehall-conceived region called the north-west, which would submerge those historical identities.
This Government have not, therefore, continued to pursue devolution to those regions, and the Committee’s findings support that. We have established the McKay commission to explore how the House of Commons might deal with legislation that affects only England, and Ministers are considering its recommendations, so I am afraid that, on this matter, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will have to continue showing his legendary patience a little longer.
The fact that devolution has not happened in England in the same way as in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland does not mean that power is not being pushed out from the centre. I have had the great privilege of being associated with a Government programme that has decentralised more power than has happened for decades. In fact, members of the hon. Gentleman’s own party have been generous enough to acknowledge that the present Government have made greater progress, in many respects, than was achieved in the 13 years of the previous Government. We have introduced local enterprise partnerships, and we signed two waves of city deals. I shall be in Cambridge this evening to sign one, and I was in Teesside and Sunderland on Monday to sign another.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby mentioned the city deal struck with Liverpool. I was at the international festival for business in Liverpool, which is already proving a great success at establishing a new reputation for the city; that contrasts with the reputation that it acquired in the dark days of the ’70s and ’80s, which my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) correctly said was injurious. It is now deliberately creating a reputation as a good place to do business, and an attractive location for businesses from around the world.
The approach to decentralisation and localism in those initiatives gives localities the right of initiative; they can tell central Government what can be done differently, so that they, knowing their economy and people, can operate in the way most likely to help them grow and prosper. We are totally committed to further empowering communities right across the United Kingdom.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North mentioned the evidence that Professor Iain McLean gave to the Committee, but I was struck by another part of his evidence, when he said:
“The main problem for a proposed UK constitutional convention is that nobody in England, representing 85% of the population, seems to feel much urgency about it.”
I think that is a fair reflection of the state of debate in the UK at present.
Against the backdrop of continuing reforms and without a strong political impetus, especially in England, for a constitutional convention, it is doubtful whether it would be as successful as some previous initiatives, which went with the grain of public opinion, might suggest. However, I know that the hon. Member for Nottingham North will accept my assurance that I and the Government will not give up. I sincerely hope that he is right in wishing me the opportunity to continue doing my job for many years; his Front-Bench colleague, for whom I have the highest regard, may want to enter a caveat about that. Nevertheless, I reiterate on the Government’s behalf the commitment that we share to the further transfer of powers outwards from the centre.